Messages - NewHere

That is not true. Some federal jobs (not contractor jobs, actual employment by the federal government) can be taken by non-citizens. Others cannot. Competitive civil service jobs cannot. Higher-up jobs with policy-making authority cannot. But several lower-level jobs are open to non-citizens.

The jobs that are available to non-citizens, however, are generally not open to citizens of all countries, only to citizens of countries in a current military alliance with the US (e.g. NATO countries and some other countries with good diplomatic ties to the US).

I think I'm somewhat qualified to answer your question. PhD in a different field of science, then law school.

The first thing you should do is strike Berkeley off your list. Nothing wrong with Berkeley in general, but in your scenario there is no reason to choose to go there above any of the other schools. After that, there's something to be said for all four of them.

YLS is head and shoulders above the rest for academia. HLS and SLS are the second-best options in that regard. I understand your concerns about the field of bio-law.

Some considerations:1. You don't really specialize much during your three years of law school. If you go to a school that is strong in bio-law, you'll be able to take more classes in it, but given the fact that you have only four semesters (give or take) to take electives, even if you go to a school that has your desired field of law, you will not come out of law school as a specialist in any kind of law. The fact that you have an advanced degree in biology will give you credibility if you want to specialize in a bio-related field after law school. Also, you would more or less automatically write your journal note (something most law students write in their second year) about a subject that goes towards your preferred area of research.

2. In your earlier thread I voted for 1. YLS, 2. CLS + Hamilton, but since you seem to have quite well-defined career goals, I think I'm going to vote 1. YLS, 2. SLS now. I think Harvard without money is not preferable over either of the other three in this situation. CLS is an option because of the money. See #3:

3. You should think about alternatives to academia, e.g. what you would do if for some reason you ended up not being able to get a job in this field. There are two counteracting considerations: on the one hand YLS and SLS will give you a chance to become a professor even if you don't end up in the top 10%; on the other hand, if you end up at the lower end of the curve, CLS + Hamilton are a better option than any of the others.

Between the others I would have said Columbia + Hamilton, because that means you'll be free to do whatever you want after graduation, without the pressure of enormous loans. And SLS vs. CLS isn't a large difference. CLS has a very active California society, and a lot of students who are either from California or interested in working in California after graduation.

The only situations I can think of in which SLS would turn out to be a better option than CLS-with-money are: 1. If you ended up in the absolute bottom of the class. It's probably easier to find a job in California if you're in the bottom 5% of Stanford than if you're in the bottom 5% at Columbia. 2. If you wanted to apply for a clerkship or a teaching position and you were not in the top of the class at either school. (It's not impossible to get a clerkship or academia with worse-than-top grades from either school, but this is where SLS would give you a leg up.)

For all other situations, it really doesn't matter much. If you want to work at a firm, you'll be able to do it from either school. If you want to clerk and you have the grades, you'll be able to do it from either school. Etc.

What I would like is someone who actually worked there say it was not worth it. people trashing cravath who never even applied there (never even interviewed) are basing their opinions on bullsh*t.

Not really. To speak for myself, I'm basing my opinion on conversations with friends who work(ed) there. I find that valuable information, equally valuable, if not more, than speaking to interviewers (who want to sell their place). My friends who work there obviously chose to do so, so they can tell me what's good about it, but also what's bad. (And for me, the balance works out such that I wouldn't want to work there. Doesn't mean that nobody should work there. Different people value different things.)

Not a jealousy thing. Jealousy would imply that all the haters had applied at Cravath and were rejected. The truth is that many people don't even apply, because they just have no interest in working there.

Let that not dissuade you. It is a great firm with a great reputation. But if you want to work there, you'd do well to listen to the negative stuff as well as the positive stuff before making your decision.

Writing is not the same as reading, but reading does help, especially if you set out to read with the express purpose to improve your writing.

What I often do -- I'm not a native speaker, so my English could use some improvement -- is read something like The Economist and underline those word uses and turns of phrase that sound good or express a concept very concisely, which, while I do recognize them, are not part of my active vocabulary.

If you do this, you can get more out of it by going over the underlined phrases again, perhaps copying them into a notebook, but it may not even be necessary; just reading well-written material and paying attention to what it is that makes it well written can improve your own writing.